Fall is finally here and the area milkweed is starting to release its seeds to ensure spring blooms. I love this plant. It produces stunning flowers and just as stunning seed pod openings.

Last Spring I was able to capture some great photos of milkweed blooms. I’ll enjoy seeing if next Spring I can get more but with a unique angle.

Milkweed isn’t only fun to look at. It also provides food for monarch butterflies. I don’t have any milkweed at home so I haven’t been able to use it to attract butterflies and photograph them. Hopefully I can change that next year.

You never know what
will interest a kid. It could be Legos or Pokémon cards or video games or
something you never even imagined. It seems like every year a child’s interests
change drastically. And although you know it probably won’t last, it’s always
heartening when your son or daughter sees something that you’re interested in
and takes an equal, if passing, interest.

This was the case last
night when my ten year old son saw me taking photographs in the back yard and
asked if he could do it too. I could have just gone and gotten an old smart
phone and told him to start with that. But he seemed genuinely interested in my
DSLR with its buttons and switches and complicated mechanics.

So I handed it to him
and draped the shoulder strap across his shoulders, knowing well that if he
dropped the camera the strap would either just slide down his back or be so
long on him that it hits the ground anyway.

I showed him how to
support the lens from underneath, how to zoom and focus manually when he needs
to and of course showed him where the shutter release button was.

He ended up being a
natural and was taking pictures I wish I had taken. It wasn’t a case of the
student beating the master. It was a case of me realizing that none of the
photos I had ever taken were ever that special. Maybe to me but certainly not
in the world of fine photographic art.

After only taking a
few photos he remarked “wow, you can be really creative with this”. He was
discovering, on his own, how you can blur subjects on purpose to create an
interesting effect.

My son has a natural
understanding of the need for good light and interesting subjects and
backgrounds. It was dusk when he started taking pictures which can be a
difficult time to learn photography. But he never let it get to him. When it
got really dark we just bumped up the ISO really high and put it in shutter
priority mode so he could take long exposures.

Will he continue with
his interest in photography? I have no idea. It could last a week or a month or
it could be over already. I have a bit of hope for it though. When he gets a
creative interest he often sticks with it for a while. He’s been interested in
making our family tree for the last three weeks and he still isn’t tired of
researching it on Ancestry.com.

But maybe I shouldn’t
be encouraging it. I might not ever get to use my camera again.

I peered over the lip of the flower and came face to face with B. After a moment of uncomfortable silence, each of us trying to gauge the other’s motive, we simultaneously came to the conclusion that we were both there by chance. After shaking hands we parted amicably.

I’m facinated with photographing power lines and poles. I love finding a series of lines that follow the natural flow of the land. Or a transmission tower against a blue morning sky. There’s something about the man-made vs nature aspect of electricity transmission that draws me to it.

That’s why I was happy to find another “powerful” subject on a hike I took over the weekend. This is a perfect example of what I’m talking about here. Unfortunately, I still haven’t found anyone else who shares my curiosity on the topic.

I always see interesting things when I go on my morning walks. This time it was a vine growing through fence slats. The vine had produced this beautiful purple flower and the fence was a stark background for it. The scene offered brief enjoyment but I decided to stop and capture an image of it for both of our future enjoyment.